(first posted 12/6/2012) Now here’s a future CC I better shoot now, because it’s going to be hard to find in twenty years. They’re already scarce, or maybe it’s just that they’re so invisible. But when it came out, I did take notice: This was the closest thing to a new, big V8 American-style four-door hardtop sedan in a very long time; sort of a neo-Pontiac Catalina. And from Japan, no less. OK; I said close, because it’s not a true hardtop, with that “invisible pillar”, but with the windows up, it’s pretty convincing.

I’m not sure just what Infiniti was thinking when it sent the M45 this way, because it was pretty obvious from the get-go that it was destined to be a wallflower. Compared to the Chrysler 300, this is so nineteen-eighties. Or even nineteen-sixties. The Japanese developed a fondness for the four-door hardtop look a long time ago, but this is likely the last exponent of the type. Or did I miss someone?

The M45 was heavily based on the Nissan Gloria, but had the Q45’s big 340 hp V8 under the hood, and its rear suspension was also upgraded. I wondered if Nissan had made it more deliberately retro, whether it might have done a wee bit better.

53 Comments

My next-door neighbor had one of these for awhile. I found it quite striking and attractive to see in real life, in ways that just don’t make it into photos. It has that big, bold quality we miss from the American hardtops, like you say. Large clean shapes with distinctive edges instead of decorations. We never got a chance to chat about it before he moved away.

I’ve quite liked these for a while, and they’re really very affordable on the used market. But they’re pretty scarce in general, and like most luxury cars from the past ten or so years, the electronics that helped make them “luxury” are now well out of date and more of a hinderance. I’d love to have one of these for long trips, but I can’t hook up my iPod properly to it.

In some ways, you’re actually better off looking at even older cars, as anything with a DIN or shaft-style radio setup can be easily swapped for something new that will interface with your music player or smartphone.

If you’re wanting to control an iPod/iPhone remotely, the Parrot MKi9200 bluetooth handsfree system is an excellent choice. I have one in my Nissan, and the Parrot’s iPod/iPhone-specific connection, means my iPod is effectively an integrated part of your car’s audio system (and is kept charged into the bargain).

I can’t control my iPod through the car’s audio controls, and I can’t view it on the car’s TV/audio screen. But the Parrot came with a colour LCD screen and a wireless remote which I find more than adequate. The remote allows control of my iPod, the screen allows me to see the options and album art etc. My iPod permanently stays hidden away under my centre console, I never need to touch it.

Nissan was generally excellent at offering RCA inputs for their factory audio too – in the M45’s JDM cousin, the Gloria/Cedric, there are often RCA inputs at the rear of the centre console and/or in the boot hidden behind the back seat.

That is odd – I’d never realised the M45 didn’t get a LHD version of the CedGlo dash. The area above the airvents is an LCD widescreen for displaying the TV/CD/DVD/aircon/satnav/trip computer. Very well located for safely glancing between the road and it (the TV doens’t play while moving).

As well as the fake wood, which was on the Brougham (yes Tom, that was one of the trim levels!), the Gran Turismo offered fake dark marble.

Man did Nissan screw up with this one. This car, along with the bland Q45, did more to damage the Infiniti brand than any other models.

Why did they think a Japanese home market design would somehow turn into a smashing success here?

The Gen 1 Infinitis were intriguing (at least until they grafted a big chrome grille onto the nose of the Q), then these things came along, with exactly 0 cache. Infiniti went quiet for many years, G models excepted. But it appears they are up to their old ways yet again, if you take a look at the new M37. Nobody’s buying those either.

These (in my opinion) were better executed than the comparatively boring Lexus LS. It’s like a big, Japanese Grand Marquis. I could never understand why they were never really popular since they were pretty sleek-looking, roomy, and I’m assuming since it was a Nissan, reliable.

I like these too in an anonymous way. A dealer in Albuquerque had one with a moss/sage paint color and tan interior, I was sorely tempted. I wonder if I put an arrowhead on the grille and spelled out “Catalina” on the trunk lid how many times I’d get stopped per week by someone who would say; “Hey I didn’t know Pontiac still made the Catalina.”

My dad cross shopped one of these when he bought his GS300 (also 2003 MY). I remember being super disappointed when he came home with the comparatively blobby Lexus instead of the svelte, muscular Infiniti. Ironically the M that replaced this became a virtually indistinguishable GS clone. Sad

This might just be the last modern sedan I find attractive. They all became tall, stubby amorphous blobs soon after.

The M was the North American version of the the JDM Cedric, the epitome of a conservative car. I like it a lot as it is understated, real luxury.

Both M and the I series make fantastic used buys. I recently connected a friend of mine with a very low km 2002 I35 for $6500. A steal for an immaculate low kmer with a beautiful interior. Look at Paul’s featured car: V-8 power and real luxury for a $10k haha price. Eight grand and you’d be on the road with this thing. For that money, fuel consumption doesn’t mean two hoots.

I also think these look great. I never understood reviewers criticisms of its looks at the time. Echoing what others have said, it has a sleek, almost American look to it, and especially in black is a very serious, slightly menacing looking car. If I was a drug dealer looking through the used market for something to cruise in, I’d take this over a 300C or LS400 any day….

From the moment these came out, I loved them. I was disappointed when they changed the styling after only a couple of years, it seemed. I loved them for just the reasons you point out – Muscular V8, RWD (I am guessing here?) and that pseudo-hardtop styling. There was something about the slope of the C pillar and the 4 window greenhouse that tickled me in just the right place. The black ones were my favorite.

If I were in the market for this type of sedan, I would stongly consider looking at one of these. I can hear Howard (my now-famous car-mentor) talking into my ear “never buy an old luxury car.” But I could be talked into ignoring him for the second time in my life. I might re-learn some of the same lessons I learned the first time, but it would sure make for some great CC stories. 🙂

I’m with you. I always liked these too. A couple of months ago I spotted a black one at a local credit union and almost stopped to get pictures, but passed it by. It wasn’t until later that I realized I hadn’t seen one in a long time.

Gee; I though I was a bit odd for liking them when they came out, and didn’t want to be too gushy about it here. But I should have known: it’s right up our CC alley. I though Nissan was taking an interesting risk, and wondered whether traditional American big-car buyers would go for it.

It has happened before…saw one of these today, come home, check out CC and there it is!
It seems there are many fans of this M here, me included though I am a big Nissan/Infiniti fan. I like this examples sleek lines, greenhouse, and elbow out the window belt line.
It looks good going fast and has a great power train. I don’t find it invisible at all. Quite the contrary not being a blob.

I just love the retro proportions of these Ms. The rear treatment is fascinating, too–little garnish, yet very unusual forms.

I recall reading that these were quite cramped. With a bit of extra passenger cabin length, this would be a far more compelling Lexus LS alternative than the blobby Q that Infiniti was offering at the time.

“The Japanese developed a fondness for the four-door hardtop look a long time ago, but this is likely the last exponent of the type. Or did I miss someone?”

Subaru was the strongest and longest lasting champion of the “hardtop” frameless windows look. Legacy, Outback, WRX and Forester had 4-door frameless windows until the last generation. Impreza until two generations ago. Every single Subaru model had frameless windows until the B9-Tribeca showed up. Now only the BRZ has them (and it’s not a 4-door)

Very good point, I keep forgetting about Subaru’s frameless windows. They always had the ‘hidden’ centre pillar on their 4-doors didn’t they though?

Toyota and Nissan stuck with genuinely framless and pillarless 4-doors hardtop sedans through the 80s. I think the C33 Nissan Laurel (1988-93) was probably the last truly frameless and pillarless 4-door on the market. I owned a ’92 C33 for several years, all-round visibility was superb. My current C35 Laurel is still frameless but has a thin hidden pillar. But it’s about the same width as the seatbelt, so visibility is still excellent by the standards of a lot of new cars.

As an enormous fan of rear-drive JDM Nissans, I’ve always liked the idea of the M45. Infiniti isn’t available here (yet), but all the Nissan-badged equivalents are plentiful here as ex-JDM used imports. So instead of the M45, we got and get its cousin, the Y34 model Nissan Cedric aka Gloria (CedGlo). Not sure when the M45 was released in the States, but the CedGlo came out in 1998 in Japan. It was facelifted in the early 00s, when it received the steering wheel shown in pshoar’s image and the headlights shown on the M45 above, as well as more mono-chromatic interiors, and for some bizarre reason the deletion of the front passenger door grip handle.

Nissan only built the Y34 CedGlo as a V6, so the M45’s V8 has always offered real appeal to me as ther’ll never be a JDM equivalent prowling our streets! Thankfully the Y34’s replacement, the Y50 Fuga (aka 2006 Infiniti M), was offered with the V8 in Japan, so they’re starting to arrive here in NZ now. Very tempting too. Annoyingly the 2009 Y51 Fuga dropped the V8 again, but it’s still available on the 2009 Infiniti M, so once again I can only ponder on that from afar!

Possibly one reason was because although it looks almost striking in isolation, it does tend to blend in remarkably well with other cars when on the road.

But I think the main reason is that it was already a 5-year old design by the time it rocked up in America. Why did Nissiniti bother? Well my theory is that it was a stop-gap measure to 1) fill a niche, 2) introduce the mid-size V8 Infiniti concept to customers, and 3) bridge the gap between the imminent G35 and the Q45.

As a stop-gap, Nissiniti made best use of an existing JDM design that was sized between the G35 and Q45 while they tooled up for the all-new 2006 model. After all, the Q45 was effectively a JDM Nissan Cima, and that idea had kind of worked out ok. No idea why they bothered with a new dashboard for the ’03 M45 though!

The Y34 CedGlo was one of the many JDM Nissan platforms deleted when Carlos Ghosn grabbed the Nissan reigns (another deleted platform was my beloved R34 Skyline/C35 Laurel/S15 Silvia platform!). Carlos decreed (sensibly) that Nissan needed to design and build competitive models for the world market, not just the JDM.

Hence the 2003 G35 Skyline set the ball rolling by being designed from the start to be a worldwide model (as an Infiniti in the US), using the new RWD ‘FM’ platform. The Skyline badge was supposed to be retired, just as the Cedric/Gloria badges were replaced by Fuga, but Ghosn refused to allow this, believing the badge was too storied to throw away and that the ‘new’ Skyline more than carried on the former Skyline traditions. Fans like me thank Mr Ghosn profusely for allowing a favourite name badge to live on – and on a suitable car too.

The CedGlo’s successor, Fuga, debuted in Japan in 2004, a year after the G35 Skyline, and used a larger version of the FM platform. The Fuga them became the ’06 Infiniti M; following in the footsteps of its G35 sibling. I guess if they brought it over in 2004 it would have left the Y34 M45 with one year on the market – not worth tooling up in LHD for. So it would probably have made sense to keep the Y34 going for another year (and by that stage the Fuga/M would have been in production for a year and had any bugs ironed out).

Wow, that’s a striking car. It has that look, like an 80s W126.
I have to admit that nothing from Infinity has ever been on my radar. I’m archiving this thing.
10k for a 340 horse sedan? Most likely less beat up than most of the Marauders out there?
I could get into that.

The looks may be polarizing (I like it), but you have to drive it to appreciate that smooth, torquey V-8. I’ve owned a 2007 M45 Sport for two years and I love the power and tight handling. For under $10,000 the earlier M45 is a helluva lot of car goodness.

Always been a big fan of these and was pleasantly surprised seeing them all over Japan during a visit as the Nissan Cedric. Your photo car has the nicer darker wood, many of them had kind of a weird orangy colored wood that is not so attractive (to my eyes). These had one of the larger standard wheel/tire combo’s of its day. As you said, the Chrysler 300 out-did it, but these were around well before those. And these are definitely nicer inside and probably better assembled for the long term.

I like these too, I guess I have conservative tastes in styling. There’s a reason why Mitsuoka chose to base one of thier models on this. It’s a natural for this treatment, although I don’t think I’d drive one.

I’ve either never seen one of these, or just never noticed them. Based on the people here that say they like the styling, I assume these cars look better in person. I looked at some other online photos taken from further away, and am reminded of a Bentley without the upright grille.

Two biggest complaints I read about this car are broken fuel gauge and the engine consumes lots of oil, both on cars with well under 100,000 miles. I suspect this car was developed before the takeover of Nissan by Renault and Carlos Ghosn being made CEO. Nissan quality was not up to par with Toyota and Honda then.

At the time, I thought this car seemed weird and dated — vaguely retro, but not quite enough. Now I see it differently. It’s actually aging quite well! I don’t think it looks anonymous at all. It’s just so nice to see a standard-size car done in a contemporary way that isn’t ridiculously tall and short-hooded. It’s the anti-Cadillac XTS.

It is nice to see an import car this recent, with a good sized hood that has minimal slope to the front (Bentleys and Rolls Royces notwithstanding). Now, if only there was a way to remove that center console and put in a bench seat. . .maybe retrofit a steering column with the shifter to maximize the floor room up front. Build a dash board out of wood to give it that cabin cruiser feel. Not worth all the trouble but it would be interesting.

The biggest issue with the 4.5L V8 in this platform definitely shows a loss of oil consumption. The story goes that Nissan got a bad batch of piston rings. It seems that a lot of owners have had the engine replaced at 100k miles or under due to this. That is a bummer since I do like the style of these cars. Oh yes, the other issue with these is that it looks 7500 or so of this platform was sold in the US during 2003-2004. That’s why you don’t find them often.

My Dad had one of these for a few years. It was a nice car. I certainly like the exterior styling, though on the inside it’s a bit cramped for such a large car (much like many of today’s cars). I would have much preferred the JDM dashboard someone posted above.

Had a few interesting features, including cooled sets, and a switch on the dashboard to adjust the aim of the headlights back down if the car was loaded with passengers and cargo, causing the nose to point up a bit.

The engine was both powerful and smooth. Just like a luxury car should be. Supposedly these can give a few performance cars a run for their money. Overtaking someone on a two-lane highway was never a problem.

His car suffered from both burning some oil, though pretty minor, and the fuel/temp gauges going bad, which would have been expensive repair if it was out of warranty. Also this resulted in the one and only time I’ve ever run out of gas. Though my Dad was with me at the time, and he neglected to tell me the gas gauge was not working right (when it failed it always read 1/2 a tank). Luckily we ran out literally across the street from a gas station. I also remember a few other electronics problems cropping up, which were fixed under warranty.

Once the warranty was up, he traded it on a Frontier Crew Cab, which was a pretty big change any way you look at it.

Really, really love these. I wasn’t sure what to make of them at first–the design just looks so very Japanese, unlike Infiniti’s other offerings at the time–but it didn’t take long at all for me to warm up to them. Striking, but in a minimalist way rather than a “LOOK AT ME” way. It does seem that an unfortunately high number of them have been blinged out with big chrome rims, but if I could find an unmolested example, I’d have a hard time turning it down!

I feel the same way. At first, really a JDM car but man! have they grown on me. I like the interiors. The bird’s eye maple veneer they used to use was my favorite. I’ve said it before, this is like a Japanese Panther platform on steroids. That V8 hauls. Would have been a cool highway patrol vehicle in state garb and could have caught up to almost anything.

I’ve always liked the looks of this car, and a RWD V8 car certainly is something I prefer.
Compared to other Infiniti models (except the original Q45) it strikes me as more athletic and masculine looking. I saw and checked out one in on a used car lot and was pretty impressed. It’s pretty easy to forget that they ever existed and they are rare even in the Bay Area. So many wasted opportunities for this marque. At least the G37 has been a hit for Infiniti.